Boomerstag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-1644732017-11-08T11:50:04-07:00A Trip Into the Heart of the Baby Boomer GenerationTypePadWhat Vincent van Gogh Can Teach Boomers (and everyone else) about Failuretag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83452558f69e201b7c93206d1970b2017-11-08T11:50:04-07:002017-12-19T10:50:15-07:00Waking from a fitful dream, he struggled out of bed and stumbled to a barred window. From this perspective in the asylum, he beheld a clear night, a large morning star enchanting him. The sight of stars always inspired him. Just as we take a train from Paris to Amsterdam, he thought, we take death to go to a star. About a year later, he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. He was 37 years old. Life...Brent Green

Waking from a fitful dream, he struggled out of bed and stumbled to a barred window. From this perspective in the asylum, he beheld a clear night, a large morning star enchanting him. The sight of stars always inspired him. Just as we take a train from Paris to Amsterdam, he thought, we take death to go to a star.

About a year later, he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. He was 37 years old.

Life started more hopefully for him. He was son of a country minister who valued education. He memorized more than three-fourths of the Bible. As a young man, he lived in Paris and worked for his uncle who was a successful art dealer. He learned and mastered four languages.

He also fell deeply in love with his landlady’s daughter, who rejected him in favor of another. This rejection devastated him and led to his being fired from his uncle’s gallery.

He decided to follow his father’s footsteps and devote his life to God. Preachers being punished by the Methodist Church were often sent off to southern Belgium to coalmining territories where retched conditions prevailed. He volunteered for this assignment, finding special inspiration working with the poor and oppressed. He was quite effective as a spiritual counselor, and the miners nicknamed him “Christ of the Coal Mines.”

Church leaders did not see him as an asset but rather as undignified, so they fired him. Again, he sought refuge in his family and even became captivated by his widowed cousin, Kate. He declared his love for her, which Kate and her parents found repulsive.

Finally, he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to pursuing art. His younger brother saw potential in his paintings and agreed to support him with a monthly stipend. An art dealer, his brother believed the older brother’s paintings might sell in Paris.

During the next ten years, he moved around Europe while befriending artist peers. He started an artist’s union in a town near Paris where notable artists visited and painted with him.

The stipend his brother, Theo, gave him was adequate for living expenses but not for models, canvases, and expensive oil paints. He often lived solely on coffee, cigarettes, bread, and the psychedelic liqueur absinthe. He had a habit of putting his paintbrushes in his mouth, exposing him to lead poisoning. He also sipped turpentine from time to time.

These horrible health practices and the hallucinogenic effects of absinthe contributed to occasional spells of madness and thus the asylum that I described at the beginning of this story.

Yet he worked at a feverish pace. He wrote, “The power of work is a second youth.”

During ten years of prodigious output, he created over 2,100 paintings. Yet he did not gain the favor of rich art collectors. People in the town where he lived treated him viciously and even signed a petition asking government officials for his removal.

During this decade of frenetic work, his younger brother was only able to sell a single painting for the equivalent of $2,300 today.

Vincent van Gogh, who preferred to sign his paintings with just Vincent, felt despondent, lonely, and rejected for most of his adult life. He shot himself in the chest as a final act of self-loathing, although he did not successfully kill himself outright. He died two days later in the arms of his devoted brother, Theo.

Today, we view Vincent as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. The 1889 painting inspired by the clear night while he was in an asylum became known as “The Starry Night” and is housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His painting called “Irises” sold for $54 million dollars at auction. Another painting, a portrait of a doctor who cared for him in the asylum, sold for $83 million dollars.

Vincent’s story can be a lesson for all of us. He went to his grave seeing himself as a loser. He felt unloved, misunderstood, and rejected by all but his younger brother.

Most of us experience some of the pain that followed Vincent through his life. Maybe we fail to achieve our most private dream. Or we lose in love. Or we feel misunderstood. These feelings are part of the human experience.

Vincent’s story teaches us that in the end we may never know the full scope of our impact on the world. Our total influence may emerge after we are gone.

Next time things don’t work out, remember Vincent, an asylum and a painting called “The Starry Night.” It is a priceless masterpiece and one enduring legacy of a downtrodden and defeated man who created the work.

The Boomer Generation Journey of "The Case for Christ"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83452558f69e201b7c8ebe9c5970b2017-04-10T17:19:53-06:002017-04-12T20:17:32-06:00This is not a blog about religion, nor is it a political blog. Rather, Boomers blog has maintained a clear generational focus since its inauguration in June 2005. Sometimes religion and politics have generational implications, and this is specifically true for a new movie released ten days before the 2017 Easter Sunday and entitled The Case for Christ. This odyssey follows the real-life story of Lee Strobel, a Boomer born in 1952. Receiving a degree in journalism from the University...Brent Green

This is not a blog about religion, nor is it a political blog. Rather, Boomers blog has maintained a clear generational focus since its inauguration in June 2005. Sometimes religion and politics have generational implications, and this is specifically true for a new movie released ten days before the 2017 Easter Sunday and entitled The Case for Christ.

This odyssey follows the real-life story of Lee Strobel, a Boomer born in 1952. Receiving a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and then a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School, Strobel began his professional career as a newspaper reporter, notably for The Chicago Tribune, where he achieved award-winning recognition from UPI for his incisive reporting.

An avowed atheist, Strobel's hardened beliefs become severely tested by his wife, Leslie. After a series of family challenges, Leslie, an agnostic, aims her struggling faith at Christianity for solace and hope. Strobel cannot accept such a transformation, feeling threatened by his wife's conversion as if a cult-like wedge driving them apart.

The journalist sets out to ply his investigative reporting skills and debunk Christianity. He focuses on the most significant myth of the religion: resurrection of Jesus Christ. By disproving Christ's resurrection from Roman crucifixion and death, Strobel believes the entire religion will cave as if a house of cards. He can then rescue his wife from brainwashing and restore the equilibrium of their otherwise compatible marriage.

Strobel travels the nation to meet with and interview thirteen evangelical Christian experts covering history, anatomy, religious studies, psychology, philosophy, and cultural anthropology. Each resurrection-defying theory he attempts to prove meets countervailing evidence; each theological linchpin becomes more persuasive and captivating. When confronted with the totality of evidence presented by so many convincing experts, Strobel's emotional resistance collapses, and he also converts to Christianity.

His epiphany launches a new career, in his words "to share the evidence that supports the truth and claims of Christianity," eventually leading to his bestselling book and movie by the same title. Brian Bird, a professional screenwriter, has given Strobel's movie adaptation its Hollywood flair, with a gripping narrative pace, engaging plot twists, and satisfying story resolution.

I became aware of this movie the same day it was released for a special showing. The news came to me through a video promotion and e-newsletter developed by Marc Middleton and Bill Shafer, co-founders of a positive aging and wellness media company called Growing Bolder.

Even with such short notice, my wife, Becky, and I attended the first screening of the movie that also included a live Q&A with Strobel, his wife, and the movie's lead cast members and principal filmmakers. Paradoxically, we watched the movie in the same theater made infamous and haunting by the 2012 Aurora slayings where twelve innocent moviegoers had been massacred and 50 others injured. Although we had the choice of two other alternative theaters for this special event, the Century 16 seemed a fitting context for cinematic redemption.

My views of cultural and artistic phenomena ultimately become filtered through the lens of generational sociology. After twenty years of serious research and study of this generation, I also believe that our shared formative years are prologue to the present and prescriptive for the future. Whether Lee Strobel knows this consciously or not, his faith origin story reflects and refines the narrative of his generation. Thus, I noticed several aspects of this movie with broader generational implications.

Give Me A Head with Hair

Young Lee sported shoulder-length hair, which made him appear revolutionary and iconoclastic in the context of the straight-laced people he encounters throughout the movie. With his "freak flag" planted in a busy, all-business newsroom, his appearance reminded me of an investigative reporting duo showcased in the movie All The Presidents Men, starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford. This universally acclaimed political thriller follows two obstinate young journalists investigating the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post. Playing Carl Bernstein, Hoffman also parades shoulder-length hair, defiant and nonconforming.

Complicated Father-Son Relationships

Young Baby Boomer men had complex and sometimes vitriolic relationships with their Greatest Generation fathers. Much of this divisiveness centered on the Vietnam War, when the men who fought nobly in World War II often felt their sons should embrace the Pax Americana moral imperatives of another offensive war. The two generations parted company on other core values, including women's liberation, racial integration, and gay rights. Boomer men often thought of their laconic fathers as insensitive and rigid, unwilling or unable to show genuine affection. Lee's angry relationship with his father portrayed this larger generational narrative. It was only after Walter Strobel's sudden death that Lee discovers how much his father loved and respected an unforgiving son. This breakdown in communication between men of these different generations has been magnificently captured through a popular song by Mike + The Mechanics and entitled The Living Years.

Carry On Wayward Son

Set in 1979 and 1980, the movie showcases some historical popular culture. One song stands out from the cinematic background: Carry On Wayward Son, created and performed by progressive rock super-group Kansas for their 1976 album Leftoverture. In 1977, the song crested at number eleven on the US Billboard Hot 100. Then Carry On Wayward Son became the second-most-played track on US classic rock radio stations in 1995 and number one in 1997.

What's ironic and not widely known is that two of the founding band members became evangelical Christians around the same time as Lee Strobel's conversion. Kerry Livgren, who wrote most of the band's hit songs, and Dave Hope, who performed as the band's bass guitar player, shared profound born again Christian experiences during their strenuous years as part of a stadium-filling rock band. Today, Livgren creates Christian music with his ultimate achievement an opus entitled Cantata: The Resurrection of Lazarus, an epic orchestral and vocal composition based on a Biblical story told in John, Chapter 11. Hope has served in the clergy for Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida. Today he is a retired Anglican priest.

Power of Generational Aphorisms

High school classmates Kerry Livgren, Kansas songwriter and co-founder, and Brent

Many Boomers remember with clarity a romantic drama film written by Erich Segal and released to theaters in 1970. Love Story conveys a heartrending fictional romance between two Ivy League college students: Oliver Barrett IV, played by Ryan O'Neal, and Jennifer "Jenny" Cavalleri, played by Ali MacGraw. Similar to Lee and Leslie Strobel's story, the protagonists of Love Story confront severe challenges to their marriage from external forces. For the Strobel's, the aphorism distilling their unity in the face of disunity is "You and only you." For the troubled couple in Love Story, one memorable line stands out as Oliver's final statement to his insensitive father: "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Boomers were raised on marketing and cultural aphorisms, and in many ways their generational story can be unfurled with a succession of pithy statements accumulating across five decades.

The Boomer generation is at a crossroads today. Many are reconsidering their spiritual beliefs, and some are rediscovering their childhood religious values. An expanding cohort falls into a religious netherworld described with an acronym SBNR: Spiritual But Not Religious.

This perennially soul-searching generation is reemerging around a zeitgeist today characterized by grand-parenting, generativity, and grief. Because of their advancing age and oncoming "sunset lifestage," many are facing increasing losses, bereavement, and core values reassessment. This is also why I have written Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at A Time of Loss. This book conveys my own search for the sources of grace.

The timing for The Case for Christ could not be better. I'm sure the creative community that has shaped this movie hopes and even expects some spiritual wayfarers will rediscover their Christian faith. At the very least, more will become inspired to ask difficult questions about the hereafter, probing for satisfying answers, much in the same way that Lee Strobel did in 1979 and 1980, the beginning of his productive career investigating and reporting on life's greatest mysteries.

Ultralight Aging™ ... an adventurer’s approach to life’s final chapters, part fourtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83452558f69e201b8d2116ee8970c2016-09-26T09:30:00-06:002016-10-10T13:10:08-06:00This is the fourth installment of a multi-part series. Begin by reading Part One and Part Two and Part Three. A Trend Emerges Cultural historians and social psychologists examine the human psyche and behavior from different perspectives; yet, both disciplines articulate similar observations about what human beings do and don’t do. Historians can tell us what happened at a certain point in time; psychologists sometimes inform us of why we humans do what we do under conditions occurring at those...Brent Green

Cultural historians and social psychologists examine the human psyche and behavior from different perspectives; yet, both disciplines articulate similar observations about what human beings do and don’t do. Historians can tell us what happened at a certain point in time; psychologists sometimes inform us of why we humans do what we do under conditions occurring at those specific points in time.

Let’s look at a concrete example. A cultural historian can enlighten us about the cigarette smoking trends of post-World War II America, a time when, unfortunately, a majority of Americans smoked tobacco, especially males. These observers can point to contributing factors such as World War II vets becoming addicted to free cigarettes provided by the US military during the war. Or advertising dominance on television by cigarette power brands such as Lucky Strike and Marlboro. Or manipulation of thought leaders as to the alleged safety of smoking, whether by engaging celebrity endorsers or convincing fringe members of the medical community to assure the public that cigarettes pose no health risks. Some advertisements from that time suggest that cigarette smoking can be a health-promoting habit, a ridiculous conjecture as seen through a contemporary lens informed by decades of clinical research.

Social psychologists can reveal some of the salient aspects of human social behavior that rooted the tobacco habit in the lives of so many. Psychologists can explain wide acceptance of a habit that on the surface and with reasonable thought cannot be justified as safe, thus posing no risks to long-term health. These experts point to such research-based notions as conformity to group norms, social impact theory, reference groups, groupthink, peer pressure, ethnocentrism, and negative social consequences.

Therefore, cultural historians can provide a detailed perspective of what happened within the social context of large groups of people at a specific time in history. Social psychologists can give us insights as to why these popular trends took hold and persisted, sometimes in the face of countervailing evidence.

Many Boomers smoked cigarettes in youth. Many also chose the healthier path of backpacking. Some of the same social drivers fomented and formed these oppositional trends: one health destructive, another health promoting.

So, today, we can also anticipate countervailing trends currently forming and gathering momentum. On the unhealthy side of the continuum, we can find members of the older generations who defy practical and prudent health practices. Around 40 percent of Boomers are overweight or obese, precipitating risks for deadly consequences such as diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart disease, and cancer susceptibility. A noteworthy segment of this group also abuses prescription medications such as pain killers. In terms of health consequences, these are the cigarette smokers of today—those who ignore medical advice and refuse to take personal responsibility for their long-term healthy aging.

On the other end of the spectrum are the health-practices devotees: aging Boomers and members of the Silent Generation who put vitality as central to their lives. A study by Yankelovich disclosed that 38 percent of the Boomer generation looks at vitality as a significant priority. Ninety-eight percent of this segment likes to keep active; and 81 percent rank vitality above all else on the list of personal priorities. The math works out to about 23 million Boomers who live vital lives by choice and place the actions necessary to achieve vitality as among their most significant priorities.

For sake of brevity, let’s label this segment Vitals. We can assume that those who fit into this segment are not just motivated by a single personal development commitment, whether physical fitness or consumption of organic foods. They are committed to a broad range of activities that promote health and well-being, including quite possibly an emerging cultural trend that I have labeled Ultralight Aging.

Typical of other trends rooted in modern society, Ultralight Aging, without being identified as such, has received recent attention through popular, award-winning movies. In these cinematic stories we can find artistic inspiration for the Vitals who populate the Ultralight Aging segment.

Hollywood and Ultralight Aging

For example, consider Wild, a biographical drama film adaption of Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling memoir entitled Wild: from Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail. The acclaimed film was produced by Hollywood celebrity Reece Witherspoon. In the cinematic version, Witherspoon portrays a tortuous but heroic through-hike along the Pacific Coast Trail, a feat accomplished by Strayed during mid-1990. Strayed was ignorant of lightweight backpacking and physically unprepared for the rigors of a 1,200-mile hike. She packed too much superfluous equipment and made many poor choices, such as buying and wearing a pair of hiking boots one-half size too small. She suffered the tortures of too much pack weight and mangled, bloody feet.

However, along the arduous trail imposing severe physical challenges, she also lost the emotional weight of many psychological travails such as a heroin habit, sexual promiscuity, an unsettling divorce, and the unresolved death of her mother, who was in her mid-forties. Strayed evolved to become lighter emotionally, finding healthier relationships that endured and discarding bad habits that forced her to make such dramatic life changes. She also became a bit wiser through “the school of hard knocks” about how to walk through the wilderness with essential but minimal gear.

The movie became wildly popular in 2014, posting box office sales in excess of $52 million against a production budget of $15 million, eventually attracting two Academy Award nominations: one for Witherspoon as Best Actress in a Leading Role, and another for Laura Dern, who played Strayed’s cancer-stricken mother, as Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Witherspoon further received a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role.

This film’s critical and commercial success also portends a growing contemporary interest in through-hiking major American wilderness trails, including the Pacific Coast Trail and the Appalachian Trail, as well as less ambitious backpacking treks for those who are inflexible time-wise or not so committed to multi-month hikes.

Continuing this narrative, Robert Redford released another movie in 2015 entitled A Walk in the Woods, starring Redford in the lead role with fellow Oscar-winner Nick Nolte in a supporting role.

An adventure comedy biopic film, the humorous buddy movie nevertheless touches on some of the same themes as Wild, but also features two aging buddies who are doggedly trying to tackle a daunting through-hike.

After spending two decades in Britain, celebrated travel humorist Bill Bryson, played by Redford, returns to his native United States. In an effort to reconnect with his country and perhaps his aging self, he decides to hike the 2,200 magnificent miles of the Appalachian Trail. But while he had envisioned it as a trek of relaxation and serenity, if not another test for a physically fit older man, the journey becomes something entirely different when his philandering, out-of-shape, neurotic former friend, Stephen Katz, played by Nolte, joins him on the trip.

Then again, a third movie debuted to the public in September 2015. Wildlike is an independent film that explores the power of the wilderness to foster communication and healing.

Mackenzie is a 14-year-old precocious teenager who has been sent to live with her uncle in Juneau, Alaska, so her mother can enter a drug rehabilitation facility in Seattle. The uncle appears to be solid on the surface, but he has a darker side. He molests his niece, forcing the intrepid teenager to run away during their day-trip to a glacier near Juneau.

Mackenzie sneaks into a Juneau motel room from a balcony for shelter. When the room’s renter returns, she hides under the bed. Shortly after the man retires, he coughs, scaring her out of the room. Next morning Mackenzie returns to the motel to help herself to the complimentary breakfast buffet where she again crosses paths with the man she alarmed the previous night. Rene Bartlett wants nothing to do with this teenager, but she sits with him to discover that he is also from Seattle. She sees the middle-aged man as a potential way to get home to Seattle so she can reconnect with her mother.

However, Rene isn’t returning to Seattle soon. He is heading to Denali National Park where he intends to backpack. He is carrying a loaded backpack with his own sense of loss due to the death of his wife from cancer. When Rene discovers Mackenzie on the same bus headed to Denali, he rebuffs her again and tells her to take another bus back to Juneau. However, she stubbornly follows him into the wilderness where it eventually becomes obvious to Rene that Mackenzie will not be safe without his protection. So they trek together with the majestic Alaskan landscape as their healing backdrop.

During this wilderness journey, the unlikely duo find solace in the company of one another and help each other heal the emotional suffering from abuse and loss of a spouse. Rene finally becomes involved and committed to helping Mackenzie elude her pursuing uncle and getting safely back to Seattle.

When Hollywood shines its spotlights on a consistent story-line, such as wilderness trekking, entertainment can become a cultural trend enveloping millions into a similar mindset and the values associated with this shared perspective. Enthusiasm for wilderness trekking is not limited to a single generation, and certainly the children of Boomers, the young adult generation called Millennials, are also discovering the special virtues of traveling light through America’s magnificent wildernesses.

But the cultural trend involves more than shared enthusiasm for the themes inculcated through a Hollywood theatrical production or a memoir. The trend involves a broader orientation toward living, including health, fitness, personal development, natural products, and outdoor recreation beyond backpacking (car camping, hunting, fishing, water sports, RVing, and so forth). The trend also has massive consumerism implications, including backpacking and outdoor equipment sales, as presently being enjoyed by REI and other outdoors equipment retailers.

Further, consumers can now purchase authentic travel experiences produced and sold by REI, National Geographic, Discovery Communications, Whole Foods, and myriad other travel planning companies.

Something tangible is shifting in contemporary values, in dominant ways of thinking about the purpose and opportunities connected with ultralight travel, whether a solo backpack into Rocky Mountain National Park or an organized safari through Zimbabwe. The people most attracted to these lifestyle choices, both the majestic moments as well as the likely minor inconveniences, those most capable of affording these luxuries, are also consumers over age 50, and most prominently, Baby Boomers.

They are the adults we can describe with a single, unifying personal development concept I have labeled Ultralight Aging.

Baby Boomer Men, Aging, and Three Kinds of Friendshiptag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83452558f69e201bb08612a9b970d2015-08-10T17:01:56-06:002015-08-10T17:00:39-06:00Healthy Aging Requires Men to Grow Up and Learn to Become Better Friends An accepted pillar of healthy aging involves fostering nurturing affiliations with others. The late Beatle John Lennon counseled, “Count your age by friends, not years.” One of the ruthless risks of aging is social isolation. Career contacts disappear. Older family members pass away. Nearby friends retire elsewhere. Children relocate to pursue blossoming careers. Some friends die too soon. A “third age” without rewarding friendships can make us...Brent Green

Healthy Aging Requires Men to Grow Up and Learn to Become Better Friends

An accepted pillar of healthy aging involves fostering nurturing affiliations with others. The late Beatle John Lennon counseled, “Count your age by friends, not years.”

One of the ruthless risks of aging is social isolation. Career contacts disappear. Older family members pass away. Nearby friends retire elsewhere. Children relocate to pursue blossoming careers. Some friends die too soon.

A “third age” without rewarding friendships can make us sicker faster and even contribute to an early demise. A recent article in Nature reported on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which concluded that “limited contact with family, friends and community groups predicts illness and earlier death, regardless of whether it is accompanied by feelings of loneliness.”

Feeling lonely may be an existential fact of living that we can survive; being socially isolated, however, may be a death sentence. It follows that one key to healthy aging comes from real male companionship.

Yet, some friendships gathered over a lifetime, we learn, are not real. Those friends become frustrating and exhausting. They don’t have time or desire to burden themselves with our problems. Some want social activities to be all fun, all the time and others need friendships to be all about them.

Now that I’m moving into the “third age” of life, I recognize the necessity to abandon unhealthy friendships and nurture those who are committed to the joys and responsibilities that true closeness can bring. I have learned to think more critically about quality of friendships, not merely quantity.

Convenience Friendships

Many friendships germinate because of circumstances. Research from the field of social psychology validates that physical proximity is the most significant factor contributing to relationships of substance. The proximity principle suggests that we form close relationships with those who are geographically near us. People who encounter each other frequently develop stronger bonds.

Thus, we pick up convenient friendships as we travel through life: childhood neighbors, school classmates, people we work with early in our careers, and associates we meet through professional and civic organizations.

And while convenience friendships can be miracles in our lives, knitting together decades of shared experiences, sometimes these relationships survive as old habits growing tattered. Friendships based on convenience can fall out of balance, even growth restricting.

I learned about the shortcomings of a convenient friendship early in life. One boy from the neighborhood was a year older, taller, and became the alpha male in our relationship. We spent a lot of time together, inseparable.

Whatever was on his agenda became a priority for me. He found a job delivering newspapers to earn spending money; I scrambled to do the same. He began smoking cigarettes; I took up the habit. He became rebellious toward authority as a teenager; I too became a budding iconoclast.

As we grew older, I eventually realized that the power in the relationship was skewed toward him. He sometimes could be psychologically menacing. He taunted me for being smaller and less athletic. He teased me about my clothes as he became hyper-conscious of rigid adolescent fashions. He sometimes dismissed me when other friends his age came to visit.

I eventually realized that this boyhood relationship, while convenient, did not offer me much fulfillment. I grew weary of his dominant personality and unwillingness to give me credit for having unique value. So when he moved away to start his career after college, I let him go his own way and haven’t been in touch for over forty years. He has never reached out to me either, so I guess he also realized that when proximity ended, so did impetus for us to stay in touch.

Cosmetic Friendships

Earlier in my career I was responsible for managing significant advertising budgets. I was popular with media sales representatives, and one of them charmed me with his wit. He became a fun friend, and we would often meet for cocktails after work. He escorted me to the ski slopes and helped me become a proficient downhill skier, a personal triumph, much appreciated. My fondness for him grew, and he seemed genuine in his positive regard for me.

Eventually I left the job with oversight of substantial ad budgets that benefited this friend, who worked as a sales rep for a radio station. He soon became scarce and unavailable. And finally an insight came to me: He was not my friend because of positive feelings for me; he acted as my friend because I could benefit him financially and status-wise within a cloistered media community.

Most men have had cosmetic friends similar to my example. Our job status made them feel more important while providing access to our social networks. We could help them achieve a goal, financial or otherwise. When our status changed, they abandoned the friendship. Gone and forgotten.

Interdependent Friendships

Interdependent relationships are the healthiest. Both parties contribute and receive. Both are available to share the benefits of closeness and help shoulder the burdens that appear as we age. They are committed to mutual growth and positive adaptation along the uncharted journey through life.

One of my closest friends, whom I met during college, was this kind of person. Sometimes our contacts would be infrequent because of geographical distance, but we would periodically reach out to each other and be available for support as needed. I helped him through a divorce as a sympathetic advisor, and he helped me embrace a wellness lifestyle that eluded me when I was a cigarette smoker.

Many years later I helped him manage the injustices of cancer, reminding him of his innate strengths and wisdom. I helped convince him to accept hospice care when it became clear that further heroic medicine would not extend his life. He showed me how to die with grace.

As I’ve grown older and wiser, I’ve become more aware that not all male friendships are created equal. Convenience friendships may benefit from shared history, but sometimes these attachments were never appropriate in the first place.

Cosmetic friendships are usually fleeting: when our status or value to the other man diminishes, they can depart without even saying goodbye.

Interdependent friendships can be one gift of maturity: the few extraordinary friends we can count on when we become distraught or disillusioned. They are the guys who lift our spirits and in return welcome a sympathetic shoulder during their tough times.

As I reflect upon my friendships through life, I accept that I have not always been above self-centeredness and pretense that can inspire convenient or cosmetic friendships. Maturity compels me to accept and correct my own relationship deficiencies so that I can become a better friend. Aging has taught me that less can be more as I aim for interdependent friendships, solid and sustainable.

Charles Caleb Colton, a popular nineteenth century English cleric, advised, “Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen.”

Wildlike, A Majestic Film, Challenges Boomer Males to Become Better Men.tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83452558f69e201bb084eee1c970d2015-07-13T08:23:00-06:002015-07-16T11:22:47-06:00Photo credit: Michael Seto Life is strange. Every so often A GOOD MAN WINS. — Frank Dane, silent era film actor Rene “Bart” Bartlett is such a man, although he struggles to liberate the good man from a troubled soul. His self-imposed exile into the Alaskan wilderness has him withdrawing from the searing ache of a recent loss. He is vulnerable and stoic. A seasoned backpacker seeking communion and healing from an unspoiled frontier. A loner by choice. Then Mackenzie,...Brent Green

Photo credit: Michael Seto

Life is strange. Every so often A GOOD MAN WINS.

— Frank Dane, silent era film actor

Rene “Bart” Bartlett is such a man, although he struggles to liberate the good man from a troubled soul. His self-imposed exile into the Alaskan wilderness has him withdrawing from the searing ache of a recent loss. He is vulnerable and stoic. A seasoned backpacker seeking communion and healing from an unspoiled frontier. A loner by choice.

Then Mackenzie, a precocious runaway teenager, intrudes by sneaking from a balcony into his motel room, hiding under his bed then scrambling away as he awakens startled. The famished girl appears again the following morning to partake of the motel’s complimentary breakfast. Once more the resolute stranger rebuffs her. Nevertheless, she doggedly follows the grief-stricken, middle-aged trekker into Denali National Park, uninvited, unwanted, and unprepared.

For a third time, Rene repels the 14-year-old who by then has no safe way back to civilization. So they trek into the rough country together while a majestic mountain tableau draws them closer, demonstrating that an isolating wilderness can also inspire spiritual union between disparate humans of different backgrounds, ages, and cultures.

Photo credit: Michael Seto

Showing uncommon restraint during their backpack, Rene Bartlett allows the tragic back-story of the young interloper to unfold, barely whispers around a campfire. He intuitively experiences the girl’s burdens but does not yet know that she has been mistreated by an uncle living in Juneau, or that Mackenzie had been sent away from her home in Seattle so her mother can enter a drug rehabilitation program.

Not having his own children, Rene nevertheless calls upon some deep reservoir of insight, perhaps ancient DNA of noble masculine character, liberating a protector within. His astuteness about wilderness backpacking broadens to understanding of how he must help Mackenzie escape her uncle’s pursuit.

Photo credit: Michael Seto

Wildlike, a debut film written and directed by Frank Hall Green, is a nuanced, troubling, uplifting, beautifully rendered meditation on manhood and fatherhood. Its themes are timeless yet firmly rooted in here-and-now. A troubled girl being sent away by an incapable mother. A disturbed uncle who crosses the line. An older stranger who finally accepts his responsibilities when challenged to assist an innocent and vulnerable victim grappling with abuse.

Although this movie portrays broader multi-generational themes, older men will discover gentle reminders about the sacred role of elders in the development and nurturing of today’s youngest generations. This includes the millions of fathers and grandfathers who are fifty and older.

Further, about one-fifth of the Baby Boomer generation did not have children, nearly double their parents’ generation. Thus, roughly seven million Boomer men have had minimal experience with the trials and joys of raising children. Yet, Wildlike demonstrates how any good man, childless or not, can contribute empathy, strength, and wisdom to unrelated children besieged with misfortunes and challenges. The movie can inspire even childless males to teach, to listen, and to shoulder some of the difficult burdens of a generation growing up in complicated times.

Brilliantly portrayed by veteran Canadian actor Bruce Greenwood (Star Trek; I, Robot; Flight; and Thirteen Days, portraying JFK), Rene Bartlett craves wilderness separation to help him come to terms with his inconsolable loss. He yearns for aloneness and absolution.

Mackenzie, played by up-and-comer Ella Purnell (Never Let Me Go, Maleficent, and Kick-Ass 2) is at once intrepid and in danger. Unwilling to remain a captive of her uncle in Juneau, where she has been deposited by her struggling mother, Mackenzie decides to find her own way back to Seattle to reconnect with her mother in rehab.

Desperate and on the run, Mackenzie’s persistence leads her to follow the hapless, aging backpacker into the Alaskan wilderness where the two eventually find solace and support within each other’s private suffering. The healing that begins there becomes further embellished by nature’s grandeur: vast glaciers, fragile mountain flowers, soaring mountain peaks, and a curious grizzly bear.

Writer and director Frank Hall Green concludes his poignant story by raising a tender possibility. Rene and Mackenzie have not merely and fleetingly connected in the Alaskan wilderness; their relationship might continue—an unwavering journey toward recovery together.

Wildlike ends with a cover of The Parting Glass, a traditional Irish folk song dating back to 1770, as performed by The Wailin’ Jennys. Listen to it now to appreciate the spirit of this quietly majestic movie:

“I believe that adventure and the wilderness have the power to reawaken our humanity and, if hand in hand with the right people, can help heal oneself.”

— Frank Hall Green, writer/director/producer

Gender and Generational Hallmarks Influencing Boomer Mentag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83452558f69e201bb08304a39970d2015-05-19T07:46:20-06:002015-05-18T10:55:58-06:00Never before in the history of this nation have so many men entered the 60+ life stage. A Boomer male turns 60 about every 15 seconds. This inexorable march to 60+ will continue until 2024, and then this generation’s longevity dash continues onward toward the eighth, ninth, and tenth decades of life. Someday, millions of Boomer men will survive beyond the average life expectancy achieved by their grandfathers and fathers. Demography by itself does not fully predict the future course...Brent Green

Never before in the history of this nation have so many men entered the 60+ life stage. A Boomer male turns 60 about every 15 seconds. This inexorable march to 60+ will continue until 2024, and then this generation’s longevity dash continues onward toward the eighth, ninth, and tenth decades of life. Someday, millions of Boomer men will survive beyond the average life expectancy achieved by their grandfathers and fathers.

Demography by itself does not fully predict the future course for this generation. The idiosyncratic Boomer value set, inspired by the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960’s and 1970’s, adds dimension to future scenarios. Here are four significant influences:

Being Boomer Male and Feminism

Boomer men were and are widely supportive of feminism, especially those aspects of the social movement focused on economic equality and full participation in institutional society.

Many recall early encounters with feminism during their teen years: perhaps a polite request not to open the door for a young woman passing by, or a more vociferous denunciation by being called a “male chauvinist pig.”

The experiences of feminism often served to confuse Boomer men; they wanted to please their female counterparts but did not necessarily wish to relinquish some of the privileges and territory of maleness as their fathers and grandfathers had defined it. Boomer men sometimes feel caught between opposing values about sexual roles: those celebrating full equality between the sexes, and those that honor the special privileges of manhood such as classic corporate and institutional power.

Many privileges under onslaught today spring from ancient religious traditions and time-honored customs when men practiced rituals of initiation, preferred separation from females during specific periods and seasons, and developed their own language nuances and culture.

Patriarchic traditions are under siege today in the cultural narratives expressed through books and movies. For example, an article in The Atlantic described how role reversals are impacting Boomer men, once-upon-a-time large and in-charge of romantic relationships:

“Up in the Air, a movie set against the backdrop of recession-era layoffs, hammers home its point about the shattered ego of the American man. A character played by George Clooney is called too old to be attractive by his younger female colleague and is later rejected by an older woman whom he falls in love with after she sleeps with him—and who turns out to be married. George Clooney! If the sexiest man alive can get twice rejected (and sexually played) in a movie, what hope is there for anyone else? The message to American men is summarized by the title of a recent offering from the romantic-comedy mill: She’s Out of My League.”

It seems that Boomer men, out of choice in youth and out of necessity in middle age, have embraced the precepts and implications of feminism. Will women in the future embrace the possibilities of maleness as it finds new expressions in elderhood?

Boomer Men versus Health and Wellness

Baby Boomer men are dichotomous with respect to health & fitness. They grew up in a time when the adult population was largely ignorant of today’s diet and health maxims. For example, I recall consuming a steady diet of high-fat foods, prepared and presented by my well-meaning mother. My mother’s refrigerator was always stocked with cheeses, bacon, whole milk, bologna, and sundry cheese casserole leftovers.

On the contrary, this generation also discovered outdoor sports and jogging in their twenties, influenced an explosion in the fitness facilities industry throughout their thirties and forties, and escorted many diet and weight-loss fads to popular and economic prominence. Thus, when it comes to health and wellness, this is a bifurcated generation. About 40 percent are overweight or obese; a smaller but nevertheless significant percentage is dedicated to maintaining fitness, with accelerating commitment to workout regimens. An entire new category of master athletes has become prominent in the last few years.

Marketing to Boomer Men as Healing

Boomer men are moving into a period of their lives representing unprecedented opportunities for growth, service, community, and fraternity. Along this path, dangers lurk: irrelevance, anger, depression, lack of appropriate role models, obesity, and a general dearth of purpose. The impact can lead some men to make abrupt and unwise changes, from quitting a job to leaving a marriage.

What might be the source for these challenges of male aging? According to Jed Diamond, PhD, author of Male Menopause and The Irritable Male Syndrome, acting out by older males involves much more than external stresses.

“Often a man’s restlessness and irritability come from the pull of his inner world, not a pull from outside. He may think he needs to leave his family, have an affair, change jobs, run away from home, leave the country. The real longing may be to fulfill his soul’s calling.”

These potential illnesses of the body and soul need healing, and this is the service that many companies in the future can provide. Marketing can be restorative when insights gleaned positively change the way men think about themselves as husbands, partners, fathers, grandfathers, and mentors. Just as marketers have been instrumental in teaching women about breast cancer, so can marketers take a leadership role in helping men understand their own needs and positive ways to address what they want through the choices they make as consumers.

Marketers can teach environmental awareness, the special role of fathers in the nation’s future, and how men and women can co-evolve, wherein both sexes share equally in the American dream.

The most powerful marketing premise of the next ten years will be healing. In healing the nation’s aging men, those insightful and courageous companies will also heal many ills besetting the nation and the globe. Along this fruitful path, enlightened companies will also experience the economic and psychological rewards of making a substantive difference, while elevating late-life manhood to a status worthy of esteem and aspiration by younger generations.

Toward Relevance and Reinvention

Although late middle age has been traditionally associated with predictability, quiescence, and gradual withdrawal from mainstream society, Boomer men are poised to shatter these stereotypical expectations, challenging, for example, barriers to employment for those over age 50 or 60. The softer side of maturity is a quest for reinvention and self-actualization. Boomer men have spent decades focused on their responsibilities as employers, employees, fathers, husbands, partners, and business and civic leaders.

The stage of life after 60 presents renewed opportunities to reach for greater idealism and relevance in life. It’s a time to discover life anew, and this perpetually seeking cohort will pursue later life with questions, a search for meaning, and by finding ways to bring life into perspective while leaving behind meaningful contributions to society. These Boomer quests will include new ways to create a more sustainable economy, ways to mitigate poverty and attendant diseases, and ways to build greater influence for the nation’s thousands of nonprofit organizations.

Excerpted from Generation Reinvention: How Boomers Today Are Changing Business, Marketing, Aging and the Future.

Robin Williams, Mork from Ork, Was Indeed Alien: a Baby Boomer Mantag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83452558f69e201bb078ed3a5970d2014-09-29T11:16:58-06:002014-09-29T11:16:58-06:00He was wealthy, internationally acclaimed, and creatively prolific, a celebrity who set many acting benchmarks. Then at age 63 he killed himself by hanging, and it remains difficult to understand why. Mork from Ork Robin Williams, a beloved comic genius, earned many accolades including an Academy Award, three Grammys, and five Golden Globes. His acting range covered an endearing extraterrestrial in the 1970’s hit television sit-com Mork & Mindy and an Oscar-winning performance as Dr. Sean McGuire, a circumspect psychotherapist...Brent Green

He was wealthy, internationally acclaimed, and creatively prolific, a celebrity who set many acting benchmarks. Then at age 63 he killed himself by hanging, and it remains difficult to understand why.

Mork from Ork

Robin Williams, a beloved comic genius, earned many accolades including an Academy Award, three Grammys, and five Golden Globes. His acting range covered an endearing extraterrestrial in the 1970’s hit television sit-com Mork & Mindy and an Oscar-winning performance as Dr. Sean McGuire, a circumspect psychotherapist in Good Will Hunting.

Depression has been the most popular explanation for Williams’ suicide. Depression is a brain disease, a biochemical misalignment, a mood disorder. Depression has been described as a dark tunnel, a state of aching sadness in which the afflicted person can no longer see liberating possibilities for brighter, happier days.

And while this explanation renders the loss of such a magnetic personality less mystifying, a psychological disorder may not fully contain self-destruction of this magnitude. Though he must have been depressed and felt isolated, what other psychic nightmares haunted him? What was Robin Williams thinking and feeling in the months, days, and hours before he hanged himself?

It behooves suicide experts to look beyond brain chemistry. Perhaps Williams, like other male peers who have self-terminated, may have finally reached a point of no return because of the socio-cultural context in which he lived. That context includes his generational affiliation and status as a post-sixty male.

Williams was born in 1951 and thus a member of the Baby Boomer generation. He grew up in times of ebullient optimism, a post-World War era of unbounded possibilities. During his two years at the prestigious Julliard School, he must have sensed the seismic power of his huge generation, a collective consciousness that bowled through the prejudices and predictabilities of older generations. So is it a leap to conclude that Williams, like millions of his peers, had enormous expectations?

In a pivotal book entitled Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation, author Landon Y. Jones, formerly managing editor of People magazine, coined the label “baby boomers” and helped propel the generation toward the focal point of American culture. One popular generational narrative goes something like this: Boomers were given unprecedented abundance by the tireless, self-sacrificing GI Generation. Boomers can expect great things to happen throughout life: stellar education, brilliant careers, economic security, satisfying soul mates, and material acquisitions that ameliorate occasional setbacks.

Unmet dreams early in life can foment pessimistic assessments later. Recent research by David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald confirms that the proverbial mid-life crisis—the least happy time of life—arrives between age 45 and 65, with males skewing older. Further, the business of “life review” is relative. A dazzling career and enviable status to most observers may seem doggedly unsatisfying to an actor on the implacable stage of reality.

Higher than any other age group, suicide rates for Boomers rose 40 percent from 1999 through 2011, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Williams was far from alone in his decision to self-terminate.

Yet, we are left wondering which of Williams’ own great expectations remained unmet. What might he have wished for that he had not achieved? Confidence in a future as luminous as his past? Freedom from addiction? Self-acceptance? Anonymity?

Added to the burden of oversized generational hopefulness could have been the weight of maleness. Son of a GI Generation father, Williams may have also learned that a man is what he does, not necessarily who he is. A man is a doctor, engineer, pastor, or actor. Maleness is concrete, specific, and unwavering toward the goal of external achievement. And for some men, the goalpost never stops moving farther downfield.

Even for those who choose the Occam’s razor explanation — that depression is the culprit — there may be another possibility: andropause or “male menopause.” Some authorities believe that reduction of the male hormone testosterone in middle-aged men can trigger depression and suicidal tendencies.

According to Jed Diamond, Ph.D., author of Male Menopause and Irritable Male Syndrome, andropause is a hormonal change in middle-aged men that has potentially devastating physical, psychological, interpersonal, social, sexual, and spiritual aspects. With these changes sometimes come insurmountable challenges of coming to terms with aging, and statistics confirm the perilous consequences of growing old a male.

“There is a silent health crisis,” observes Dr. Diamond, “with males living sicker than females and dying from fourteen of the top fifteen leading causes of death at rates higher than those for women.” Eighty percent of all suicides in the U.S. are men. The male suicide rate at midlife is three times higher than the rate for women. As men age over 65, the suicide rate accelerates like a speeding bullet to seven times higher.

Dead Poets Society

In his portrayal of John Keating, the beloved English teacher in Dead Poets Society, Williams stood on a desk and asked his students why he would do this. To feel taller? No.

“I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.”

He was a resounding voice of a generation. He won acclaim for his abilities to interpret the human condition in ways that made us laugh at ourselves. And so we are left questioning when he stopped seeing things in a different way, whether blinded by the tunnel of depression or great expectations dashed by sobering maturity. Or from being a man growing older, another Boomer male suffering an aching sigh of diminishing self-worth

Smokerism: The Stigma That's Killing Post-50 Adults and Boomerstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83452558f69e2017ee630ea2d970d2012-12-18T11:16:00-07:002016-08-04T08:57:42-06:00If you are a cigarette smoker, or if you smoked sometime in the past, do you deserve to die faster? According to prevailing norms, you warrant an earlier death—a bitter truth rooted in the shadowy realms of human experience. Racism holds that distinctions exist between biological groups, that members of a race share traits making them less or more desirable participants in society. Pervasive assumptions about racial groups have justified destructive treatment of perceived group members for centuries. But ostracism...Brent Green

If you are a cigarette smoker, or if you smoked sometime in the past, do you deserve to die faster? According to prevailing norms, you warrant an earlier death—a bitter truth rooted in the shadowy realms of human experience.

Racism holds that distinctions exist between biological groups, that members of a race share traits making them less or more desirable participants in society. Pervasive assumptions about racial groups have justified destructive treatment of perceived group members for centuries.

But ostracism and socioeconomic penalties have not been limited to racial groups. Many other pejorative isms have been coined to describe insidious forms of prejudice and stereotyping: for example, sexism, ageism, and antisemitism.

Public and media discourse revolving around isms rarely includes behavioral choices. One dangerous but legal habit, however, has had vast destructive impact on society, and stereotypes about those who are addicted have risen to the status of an ism. The consequences have been deadly.

Tobacco addiction has spawned smokerism—censure and rejection of those who partake in a nicotine habit, coupled with tacit assumptions about their weaknesses and failures.

When someone tells you that his relative has just been diagnosed with lung cancer, do you privately wonder or even ask if the relative was a cigarette smoker? That’s smokerism lurking.

Endemic cigarette smoking is one consequence of social, business and political policies—an intersection of three forces that combined to hook the World War II generation en masse while contributing to widespread addiction among the generations growing up in the 1950s and 1960s.

During World War II, the U.S. government issued free cigarettes to GIs, compliments of the major tobacco companies. Millions of nicotine-addicted soldiers returned from the war to proliferate cultural acceptance of the habit.

Then during the 1950s and 1960s, a largely unregulated tobacco industry made tobacco advertising omnipresent. Winston cigarettes propagated one of the most famous television jingles of all time, imprinting it in the minds of young Silent Generation members and Baby Boomers: “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should!”

The Marlboro Man became an iconic cowboy hero on television, billboards, and in magazine ads. A cartoon mascot called Joe Camel linked the pernicious habit with the cult of ultra-cool. Many cigarette ads featured endorsements from Hollywood celebrities, medical doctors, and even Yankees slugger Mickey Mantle, a baseball player then admired as the paragon of professional athletes. Major cigarette brands even sponsored wide-reaching, multi-generational television shows—notably, To Tell the Truth and Gunsmoke.

In 1964, U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry released an Advisory Committee Report on Smoking and Health, citing more than 7000 scientific articles that linked tobacco use with cancer and other diseases. That should have been a real drag, but many in today’s oldest generations were already hooked. And as governmental oversight became more restrictive, tobacco marketing became more artful and persuasive. For example, many Baby Boomers can recall buying candy cigarettes as their first introduction to the “pleasures of smoking.”

“Today’s generation of older Americans had smoking rates among the highest of any U.S. generation. In the mid-1960s, about 54 percent of adult males were current smokers and another 21 percent were former smokers.

“In 2008, over 17 million Americans over the age of 45 smoked, accounting for over 22 percent of all adult smokers. Nine percent of Americans over 65 years of age currently smoked.”

The tobacco companies apparently knew what they were doing, as the American Lung Association further illuminates:

“Early onset of tobacco use contributes to greater rates of addiction, making adolescence a particularly vulnerable age. Specific neurobiologic factors may contribute to adolescent vulnerability.”

Mid-20th Century popular culture and insightful marketing succeeded in glorifying the cigarette habit, tapping into the inexorable influences of peer pressure and identity-searching typical of teenagers, a life-stage when unhealthy habits are least amenable to independent, farsighted judgment. Federal and state governments responded with ineffectual regulatory measures: much too little, much too late.

Many scientists today conclude that nicotine is one of the most addictive of all psychoactive drugs. Nicotine actually scores higher on “dependence”—the difficulty in quitting and relapse rates—than heroin, cocaine, and alcohol. This drug activates complex physiological and psychological mechanisms that perpetuate smoking behavior with frequencies unlike any other addictive substance. Pack-a-day smokers satisfy their cravings with 70,000 nicotine “hits” a year.

Cigarette smokers have always had the option to quit, but an accepting culture coupled with addiction have often overwhelmed the will of individuals who would have preferred not to start smoking or wanted to quit sooner when damning medical evidence became public knowledge.

Smokerism, similar to its nasty –ism cousins, has engendered societal and economic maltreatment of smokers. This is most apparent in funding allocations for medical research to find cures for the most deadly of cancers.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, malignant neoplasms—or cancers—were the second leading cause of death in 2011. Lung cancer accounts for more deaths than any other cancer. In 2012, an estimated 160,340 died from lung cancer, representing roughly 28% of all cancer deaths. This is more than all the deaths attributable to prostate, breast, and colon cancer—combined.

Cigarette smoking is the most significant risk factor for lung cancer—a causative link in about 85% of all lung-related cancers—and risk increases with quantity and duration of smoking. The onset of lung cancer among current and former smokers typically occurs between ages 55 and 65.

Given these facts, doesn’t it seem reasonable that research to discover early diagnostic procedures and cures for lung cancer should be among the highest funded priorities of the federal government?

According to a recent article published by The Orange County Register, “In 2011, the two federal agencies providing most of the research money funded breast cancer research at a rate of $21,641 per death while spending $1,489 per lung cancer death.” The article further cites National Institutes of Health estimates concerning research grants for fiscal year 2012: NCI invested about $712 million on breast cancer versus about $221 million in research on lung cancer.

“The stigma of smoking is largely to blame. Anti-tobacco campaigns have done their job too well, leading many to see lung cancer as self-inflicted. That stigma keeps some families and patients from speaking out, while corporate donors stay away from the disease, and some scientists and policymakers question whether scarce research dollars should be devoted to a smokers’ illness.”

Another name for the “stigma of smoking” is smokerism.

Racism denigrated many generations of American citizens who were from non-white minority groups. In today’s emerging post-racial era, it is judicious that we also contemplate how smokerism is damaging another class of citizens, censuring their lack of character for not beating the addiction or for succumbing to the habit during youth. By making individuals fully responsible for this malicious habit, we deny the tectonic political, social, and business forces that for more than a century combined influence to hook a nation on cigarettes.

Smokerism diminishes the potential for longer, healthier lives among current and former smokers, significantly represented by citizens over age 50. If the nation would have the collective resolve to spend more research dollars on the most pernicious metastatic disease of our time, and in proportion to the impact that disease has had on adult mortality, then many more lives could be spared and greater social justice would prevail for a maligned group.